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She found herself grinning, leaning into the last corner, gunning the throttle to speeds that were making her heart jackhammer and her breath flutter. She couldn’t risk a look in the rear view now, not at this speed, and she sensed rather than saw Pony sliding closer and closer up to her, only a few feet behind her, maybe only inches.
Then, they shot over the finish line, Pony so close on her left that she could see the front of his bike out of the corner of her eye. Another hundred yards and he might have passed her.
They flew past the spectators and their flashlights. Now that it was over, Piper started to ease down, both her speed and her tight grip on the bike. As everything in her began to relax, and she slowly came to a stop on the dark country road, a part of her was a little terrified at how fast she’d pushed herself just now.
But mostly, she was simply thrilled at the win. The win, and how it had been gained, by her and Pony meshing together into a perfect team. She wasn’t sure which was better- the win or the feeling of complete synchronicity with Pony.
She looped her bike around to the parking lot, slow and easy, bringing it to a stop. Pony pulled up next to her, switching off his bike and removing his helmet as he climbed off of it.
Piper followed suit, shaking her hair out in the cool night breeze once her helmet was off.
“Well, I’ll tell you this, Pony,” she said, moving up close to him. “You sure now how to get a girl’s heart pumping.”
Pony said, “I almost had you here.”
Keep it up, and you might still, she thought, but what she said was, “Almost.”
She couldn’t keep her eyes off of his, and what she saw there was something she didn’t get to see very often. Admiration. Genuine, real admiration, mixed in with more than a little desire.
And she knew her eyes were saying the same thing to him. Everything about this man was everything she wanted in a man, from the way he looked to the way he talked to every damn thing about him.
All she wanted to do was move closer and closer and closer to him, even though she knew it was a terrible idea. Even though she knew it could never work out, her a cop and him and outlaw.
And the last thing she wanted to do was to break his heart.
But what about hers?
Right here, right now, with her heart pumping and how she was looking at Pony, with the way he was looking at her, she couldn’t deny it. She’d never felt so attracted to a man.
When she’d first come to the MC clubhouse bar, she hadn’t spent so much time talking to Pony because he seemed like the easiest one to flip and testify against the club. If she was being honest, she’d done it was because she wanted to get to know him, because she sensed that they shared a simpatico that was undeniable. Just now, during the race, it seemed like he knew what she was thinking all along the route; the game of leapfrog past the first group of competitors, then the bait and switch maneuver that allowed her to slip past the tweaker trio who kept trying to block their way.
Piper had been around long enough to know that the sort of chemistry they shared was a rare and special thing. You didn’t find it every day. Some people never found it at all. And now all she wanted to do was to take that last dangerous step toward him and lose herself in his embrace.
He wanted it too. She could see it in his eyes. And before she knew what she was doing, she was moving forward, toward those eyes that held hers, toward those waiting lips, toward the kind of trouble that she was not prepared for.
“Fucking bullshit, is what that is!”
She stopped in her tracks, a long and lonely distance from Pony’s arms. It was one of the tweakers who spoke, shouting obscenities as he paced back and forth where he and his friends had parked their bikes in the abandoned gas station parking lot.
“These assholes,” she said through gritted teeth.
She wasn’t sure which was worse; getting pawed at by Black Tooth, him and his friends trying to cheat during the race byworking together to block everyone from passing them, or now, their ruining her moment with Pony by whining about losing.
It was Black Tooth who was complaining. One of his emaciated buddies was trying to talk him down, but he didn’t seem like he was having any of it.
“Naw, naw!” he said, shrugging off his friends. “I’m telling you, she must have some fucking, like, foreign nitro system or some shit hooked up. Nobody beats me on this course!”
“Bit of a sore loser,” Pony said, watching Black Tooth’s antics with more than a little amusement.
“You can say that again,” Piper said.
To Piper’s surprise, Pony left her side, walking straight towards the tweakers with purpose.
“Where are you going?” she said.
“Going to talk to those guys for a second. Be right back,” Pony said.
At first, Piper thought there might be trouble. Black Tooth was still flailing his arms around wildly, loudly complaining to anyone within earshot about how he’d been robbed of victory. But shortly after Pony stepped into their orbit, the tweakers seemed to settle down.
